Critical Reflection Essay

 

• How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
• How do your products represent social groups or issues?
• How do your products engage with the audience?
• How do elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

 

When creating a brand it is important that the message that comes across is relayed across the whole campaign, it needs to be easily recognisable throughout all three products. We want to create a brand that our audience can buy into and to create something that fits into the alternative indie genre. The mission statement related to our star image describes her as a quirky alternative independent woman. We tried our best to enforce this idea across our music video, social media page and digipak. One of the main ideas we wanted to communicate to our audience is that a strong independent woman can also be fighting her own battles that sometimes don’t get shown when you are in the spotlight. Showing vulnerability to an audience will open up conversation and make a change.

Through our social media page we wanted to push forward the idea of our star being a radical feminist we did this through posting different quotes supporting women’s rights as well as charities that work with vulnerable women.  We relayed the same message across in our digipak with the representation on the front panel being in black and white, we wanted to show a vulnerable side to the star ( being in the black part of the picture ) and then her strong feminist side being in the light.

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For my research I looked into the alternative indie genre to look into the key conventions of a professional music video. I realised after looking into a variety of videos a lot of alternative indie music videos consist of lowkey lighting, quirky  props to complement the different types of outfits and majority of the time is purely narrative with little to none performance. In particular we looked into Billie Eilish music videos as she identifies as an alternative Indie artist and she relies heavily on MES to tell her storyline The story we are aiming to tell is about a young arty and eccentric woman . Her music videos predominantly have a narrative with typical conventions, for example outfits that compliment the background lighting, unique and quirky makeup as well as  cutting on the beat of the music.

However going against the normal conventions within a music video of its majority of the time being narrative we also added in performance as well. We thought that doing this would benefit our music video as we had come up with a good storyline we thought would go well with the song. We used a storyline consisting of our star confronting her cheating boyfriend who gets killed by the star, which we felt would fulfil the expectations of the audience. Although we went against typical conventions with the narrative and performance, we followed the conventions of our indie genre and how the stars are often presented  in the music video. For example our music video relied heavily on Mes-En-Scene to tell our storyline. We showed our star’s mood by adjusting the lighting. When our star killed the boyfriend we dropped the lighting to lowkey to show her feelings getting more sombre and dark.

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We wanted to represent Orla as a radical feminists supporting women’s rights as well as a quirky, fun independent women wanting to inspire the next generation. When Orla isn’t working hard on her music album she’s working with charities, spending time with her family and finding ways to interact with her fans. We relayed her strong independent side of her through the front cover of our digipak through an image of her looking into a mirror applying red lipstick which is used as a semic code (Barthes).

When we started to mockup ideas for our star image we wanted to represent her as an angel with dark secrets. We incorporated a mirror so it gave the effect that she was looking at her own reflection but she sees the possibilities of who she wants to be, inspires to be but she is stuck as a conflicted, confused woman. We represented this in the image by turning the image black and white, we changed her reflection to the lighter colour and her standing looking into the mirror black. Doing this gives the audience a sense of our star having a split personality. The red lips represent a symbolic code (Barthes) in the aim to create a seductive, sexy and angelic look of an angel. Following on from our mission statement presenting her as a strong feminist, the lips give power and independence to the star. On the third panel we designed a rough cut bloody finger print behind our CD.Through the use of this device we wanted to create a sense of anger, frustration and we included the phrase, “Why not me?”to create a semic code (Barthes) to show the thoughts in her head over the fact her boyfriend had an affair.

When creating our social media page we wanted to ensure that the audience had plenty of opportunities to engage with our stars. As Hall mentions it is important to think about the audience’s demographics and psychographics and take into account what would attract our audiences. For example our star presents herself as a radical feminist and aims for change, therefore in our social media page we aim to send that message across and attract similar audiences who follow the same beliefs. We present our star image as a woman who is talented, emotionally intense and someone who is authentic. We want our star images audience to be able to relate to her and find a common interest. We hope to do this through our social media page, promoting women’s rights and working with different charities who specifically work with young/vulnerable women.

 When producing our social media page it was important to us that the audience was able to connect and interact  with our star, this is why we ensured that the social media page was full of what Blumler and Katz would argue are the uses and gratifications that the audience seek when consuming the media. One they would argue is essential is social interaction. We allowed the audience to interact with our star through doing a Q&A on our star’s story on instagram, this allows the audience to communicate their thoughts and ideas to the star. On the instagram story we posted what kind of content would our audience like to see, sneak peeks of upcoming albums, song release, brand deals? Doing this we got positive feedback from the audience and took that on board when we published content.  We want our audience to be able to communicate with one another. We hope this will be achieved by creating content that will spark a conversation. For example, one post we will be doing before our album release is a sneak peak of one of the songs music videos, this allows the audience to gather a representation of the star which the audience can recognise and discuss. Doing this will create digital word of mouth between the fans and open up an opportunity for other audience members to hear about it.  By looking into other alternative indie artists social media pages we want to do something that will visually engage our audience with something they will find visually appearing. Doing this will broaden our audience profile and inspire young indie fans.

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